'Tree Man': An Amazing Transition

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Doctors diagnosed Dede with the common human papillomavirus, HPV, and a rare immune deficiency, which, in combination, caused Dede's warts to spread over his entire body.

Dede's gnarled growths sprouted from his face, hands and feet. In a photo taken last year, he sits with his father in their house. At the time Dede hoped a doctor would be able to treat the horn-like extensions that started appearing on his body when he was a teenager. He is known as "Tree Man" throughout Indonesia. (Supri/ Reuters)

 

Dede Koswara is covered in bark-like warts that have swollen his limbs and sapped his energy and limited his mobility. Treatment appeared to help, until side effects and a medical turf war stymied the effort.

 

 

Inside a dimly lighted living room in the heart of the Javanese forest, Dede Koswara blankly examines his bulky hands, which have morphed to the size of catcher's mitts. He shuffles along on blackened, bloated feet, a prisoner of his own mutinous body.
For years, the slender construction worker watched helplessly as his limbs broke out in a swath of grotesque bark-like warts that sapped his energy and limited his mobility.